No global changes to the academic calendar

Provost Michael Halleran sent the following message to the campus community on Aug. 31, 2011 - Ed.

Dear
Campus Community,

What
a wild start to the year! I hope that everyone has gotten through Irene
successfully and that we can now get the semester off to a great start, with
classes resuming today and Convocation rescheduled for this Friday.

I
have consulted with the deans, President Reveley, Vice President Ambler and the
university registrar about the best way to make up for the classes that were
missed because of Irene. On balance, with relatively little time
lost and since we’re still very early in the semester, it seems best to make no
global changes to the academic calendar. (Possibilities included
foregoing fall break, adding some Saturday classes or moving classes into
the reading period, each of which approach has its drawbacks, and might have
been necessary if the storm had been more disruptive.) Instead,
individual faculty, working with their chairs, directors and deans, will make
adjustments to courses as appropriate—within the standard calendar.

Should
faculty need to schedule an extra session for your class, please ask your
department assistant to make the request directly with the university
registrar’s office. We ask that department assistants coordinate all
requests rather than having individual faculty contact registrar’s office staff
themselves.

As
a reminder: the course add/drop deadline has been extended to Wednesday,
September 7th.

Let
me also take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the many who worked
hard and at times during the night over the past few days to prepare our campus
for the storm and, after it was over, to get us up and running again as quickly
as we did.

Great
to have everyone back on campus—and best wishes for the new year!